


Not A Single Star In The Seoul Sky

by shellfishDimes



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Goodbyes, Heartache, Heartbreak, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up, Reunions, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 21:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14341248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellfishDimes/pseuds/shellfishDimes
Summary: They've spent hours together by now, and Minho still feels like he's teetering on the edge of a panic attack. He bows his head to the side, making his earring droop down. When it touches the bare skin where his shoulder meets his neck, the metal is still cold from when they were outside. It's a brief comfort. Minho's hair still smells like the late winter air. Taehyun's fingers still probably smell like the cigarette he had fifteen minutes ago, on the walk from the bar to his flat.The silence hangs in the air between them like a dead body.





	Not A Single Star In The Seoul Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shookyfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shookyfan/gifts).



> title from epik high's [연애소설 (love story)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3INNjAEqHk), because tablo writes the best [breakup songs](https://genius.com/Epik-high-love-story-lyrics). open _crush_ by richard siken on the contents page, close your eyes and point. whichever poem your finger lands on, it will have been an inspiration for this. whoops? ha ha.
> 
> set recently. probably just before winner's current comeback? yeah.

As Minho stands in the hallway, Taehyun's Bengal cat rubs against his ankles. He clenches and unclenches his toes, hoping that the hole in his left sock doesn't slide around to where Taehyun can see it.

All the ceiling lights are off. It's three in the morning. The blinds are closed on the windows, closed just enough that the headlights of passing cars still flash across the walls, although no sound comes through the glass.

A car passes. The light flashes. It flashes across the thin figure of Nam Taehyun, made even skinnier by the billowing shirt he's wearing. He uncorks a bottle of wine, the sleeves slipping up to his elbows. He has new tattoos.

The cat gives up on Minho and pads away through a half open door, to somewhere else in the flat. There's a dog napping on the couch, its nose pressed into a wrinkled blanket. 

Taehyun takes two glasses from somewhere, proper stemmed wine glasses, and pours. The sleeves slip back down to his wrists. Minho pushes himself off the wall, his shoulder digging into the plaster.

He sits on the floor, cross-legged, and Taehyun sits opposite him, his back resting against the sofa, his shoulders almost touching the sleeping dog.

Cars pass outside.

The wine is red, and good, and Taehyun still has smudges of makeup around his eyes. Seeing him completely changed like this hurts in a different way than Minho expected.

Another cat, a white and black one this time, crawls out from under the sofa and climbs on one of Minho's legs. He scratches it behind the ears, and it starts purring almost immediately. It sticks around for a minute, having the time of its life, but then it seems to completely lose interest, and it slinks away into the darker corners of the room.

They've spent hours together by now, and Minho still feels like he's teetering on the edge of a panic attack. He bows his head to the side, making his earring droop down. When it touches the bare skin where his shoulder meets his neck, the metal is still cold from when they were outside. It's a brief comfort. Minho's hair still smells like the late winter air. Taehyun's fingers still probably smell like the cigarette he had fifteen minutes ago, on the walk from the bar to his flat.

The silence hangs in the air between them like a dead body.

Minho's hands are shaking just a little when he reaches for the bottle to refill his glass. The things he wants to say are heavy on his tongue. His stomach is tight. He hasn't eaten since yesterday, but if he opens his mouth to get even one word past his lips, he's terrified he'll vomit.

Taehyun reaches for the bottle, too. It's been so long since Minho saw his face. Looking at his posts on social media meant unearthing things that he'd worked hard to bury, so he didn't. Despite that, he's still too familiar with the look of annoyance on Taehyun's face not to recognise it immediately. His face says: he's the host, he's younger, he should be doing this. Not Minho, whose heart hasn't left his throat since he first stepped over the threshold of Taehyun's flat. When he toed off his trainers and the first touch of his socks on the wooden floor, hole and all, jerked him away from the delusion that this was just a dream he was going to wake up from. 

Taehyun reaches for the bottle, and Minho has no idea what his own hands are doing. He wants to pull away, he wants to reach forward until their hands meet. It's like missing a step going downstairs. His stomach jolts. And in the next second, the dog has woken up and ran out of the room, the bottle is on the floor, and the wine is all over Minho's legs and Taehyun's hands.

He has new tattoos, and they're dripping.

Minho grabs his hands, and they're sticky, and wet. Taehyun flinches back, but Minho grabs on tighter. Even though Minho is thinner now than he can ever remember being, Taehyun has always been weaker than him. In a lot of ways.

He doesn't know what he's trying to achieve. He runs his fingers along the scraggly lines, the birds, the skin without ink, russet with wine. 

A car passes, the light flashes. Across the bottle leaking wine into the wooden floor, the two empty wine glasses. The eyes of one of the cats light up yellow from under the table, and then dim as the light leaves.

Another car, faster, and the light flashes like reel stuck in a projector, or like lightning far on the horizon. Across Nam Taehyun and his wide eyes, Song Minho and his earring, the ring on his finger on the hand that's grasping at Taehyun's.

His lips are on the letters drawn across the back of Taehyun's hand, on the name of the god of music, on the wine. Taehyun's fingers smell like the cigarette he had fifteen minutes ago.

"Minho," Taehyun says. It doesn't sound the way it used to.

"Tae," Minho says, against his knuckles. And it hurts exactly like he thought he would. Like rope around his ankles, like the concrete block dragging him down to the bottom of the lake.

"Don't. Stop," Taehyun says. "Stop," he says it again, fiercer. He chokes on the last syllable when Minho lifts his arms, kisses the heel of his palm, his pulse point. Minho catches a trail of wine trickling down Taehyun's forearm, the single drop melting on his lips.

Taehyun breaks Minho's grip, throwing his arms open so forcefully that Minho has to catch himself so he doesn't fall over.

Taehyun surges forward, on his knees, pushing his wet hands into Minho's hair. It stains the pale pink red. He pulls on Minho's hair, letting it soak up the wine.

"Is this what you wanted?" he snarls. His eyes are steel, and they're as close to Minho as they used to be, sometimes, before he left. His breath is angry on Minho's face.

Minho closes his eyes. Taehyun's hands press on his skull, like he wants to crush it. He's shaking. Minho shuts his eyes tighter when he feels their corners sting.

"I want to see you happy," he says, against the heart in his throat.

"I was," Taehyun says. "I am." He's pulling on strands on Minho's hair, like he wants to pull it all out. It makes Minho's scalp burn. "I didn't feel trapped until you came back." That hurts more than him tugging on Minho's hair. "Now you're back in my head, and I can't escape my head."

"I'm sorry—"

Taehyun's lips on his cut Minho off. His mouth tastes like wine, and a trace of cigarette smoke that Minho chases with his tongue while Taehyun is furious enough to keep kissing him.

Taehyun's cheeks are wet when he stops. He wipes his hands on Minho's shirt, leaving pink tracks. "I don't want to see you again," he says. The hope that had blossomed in Minho's chest calcifies around his heart.

The wine is soaking into Minho's trousers. Headlights pass across the window, and away.

"I want you out of here," Taehyun says, pressing his fingers to his temple. He balls his hand into a fist, thumping it against the left side of his chest, hard. "And here." There's a twist of anger to his mouth, aimed both inward and outward. "It's been long enough."

"Two years," Minho says, the cadence of his words wrapped in the string of months and days that stretches between the moment he last saw Taehyun, and this one.

An eternity, and no time at all.

"Okay," Minho says. "I'll leave." Taehyun's eyes meet his, and Minho wants to lean in, and pull away at the same time. "You'll never see me again."

The wine has dried on Taehyun's hands. His cheeks are still wet. "You're not mad," he says. "Why aren't you mad?"

Minho smiles. His vision blurs. "Tae," he says. He blinks, and the tears roll down his cheeks. He can see Taehyun clearly now. His black hair is untidy, his eyes are guarded.

"Don't say it like that," Taehyun says. "You can't say it like that anymore." He's sitting hunched, like he wants to disappear.

Minho wants to kiss him. He wants to lay him down on the doghaired sofa and get his hands all over him, until they remap his body and until every line of his palm has soaked in Taehyun's shape.

The life line, the curve of his throat. The heart line, the sweep of his collarbones. The fate line, the skin of his forearm, black with tattoos, pink with wine.

He wants to do that, at least, and then he'll leave him, and he won't look for him again, and the roads of their lives will fork and never meet again, and Taehyun will be happy. And because of that, so will Minho. 

And he does, he wants to leave. He wants to get up from the floor, and put his shoes back on, and leave. Walk all across Seoul back to his dorm, to Jhonny, and Rey and Bei, and Jinwoo. Back to who he was hours ago. Back to who he's been for the past two years. Back to being someone who didn't think about things like covering Taehyun's body with his own, his hands parentheses around Taehyun's face.

Minho shifts his weight. If he's going, then he can say it. The words might spark between them for a moment, but the dawn will come and when it flashes through the blinds, the sun will bleach his words until they don't sting as much.

"I love you," he says, and it tastes like Taehyun's name. It sounds like the first time he called him Tae — and every other time after that — breathing it against the skin of his neck, on a night that was so much like this one, but with hope in the air instead of the smell of drying wine.

"I wish you didn't," Taehyun says to his upturned glass. His fingers are clenched on his knee, like he's holding himself back from smashing it to pieces.

Minho laughs, and it sounds like broken glass to his ears. "Yeah," he says, getting to his feet. "Me too."

The Bengal cat comes to see him again as he's putting his trainers back on. He strokes its back, and it curves up to meet his hand, coiling its tail around his wrist for a moment. It walks a little way away from him and pauses at the threshold of the living room, the tip of its tail a question mark. Minho looks beyond, at Taehyun, outlined in the half light. Their eyes meet, and Minho never thought he'd have to see Taehyun's look this sad again.

He's the first one to look away. He can feel Taehyun's eyes on the back of his neck as he closes the door behind him.

Minho walks home, all across Seoul. The brake lights of passing cars glitter. The air smells like the onrush of dawn.

He doesn't cry again. There are no stars.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry about the heartbreak. I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/fanxytelevision), so come yell at me there if you like, but be gentle.


End file.
